


History of Silence

by eternaleponine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Clexa Week 2020, F/F, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Second Chances, Seriously if you love Skaikru this is not the story for you, Skaikru is The Worst, They are the villains of this story, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-22 20:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23000245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: Innocence, your history of silenceWon't do you any goodDid you think it would?Let your words be anything but emptyWhy don't you tell them the truth?- Brave, Sara BareillesAfter years together, Lexa is tired of being Clarke's dirty little secret, and forces her to make a choice.In a bar, drunk and heartbroken, Clarke is offered another choice: If she could go back and do it all again, would she?Given a second chance, will Clarke choose love (and Lexa), or will she make the same mistakes all over again?
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 33
Kudos: 137
Collections: Clexaweek2020





	History of Silence

"If you could go back and do it all over again, would you?"

Clarke looked up from her glass, bleary-eyed from alcohol and unshed tears, at the source of the voice, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't force the person's face to come into focus. "What?"

"If you could go back and do it all over again, would you?" they repeated. 

Clarke didn't need to ask what they meant by 'it'; the sound of the door clicking shut behind Lexa for the last time was still echoing in her ears.

* * *

"She's my mom!"

"And I'm your wife!"

But she wasn't. Not technically. Not legally. She'd asked, and Clarke had accepted, but they'd never had the ceremony, never even gone to city hall. Clarke didn't even wear her ring, and she said it was because it might snag on the latex gloves she was constantly putting on and taking off, but they both knew it for the lie it was.

Clarke didn't wear her ring because she didn't want anyone to see it. She didn't want anyone to know.

Or... that wasn't exactly true. It wasn't that she didn't want _anyone_ to know. She just didn't want it getting back to her mother, because there would be questions. Questions Clarke wasn't ready to answer.

Even after all these years. 

"You can't make me choose," Clarke said. "Lexa..."

Lexa looked down, away, blinking furiously to keep her tears at bay, to suck down and bury her emotions again like she had so many times before, but this time there was no holding back the tide. The floodgates opened, and god, even with tears streaming down her face she was beautiful. 

Clarke reached for her, to take her face between her hands, to kiss it and make it better, but this time Lexa didn't let her. This time Lexa caught them and put them back at Clarke's sides, shaking her head. 

"No," she said. "I've tried. I've tried to make this work, and I've told myself that you were trying too, but every time... _every_ time... no matter what they do to you, no matter what they say, you always go back. And I can't... I can't keep picking up the pieces. Because eventually there aren't going to be enough to put you back together."

* * *

She hadn't even slammed it, which might have made it easier, but...

_"I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed."_

Because she'd finally made Clarke choose, after years and years... and years... of letting it go, letting it slide, accepting less than she deserved (because she was more than Clarke deserved). She'd finally said, 'It's them or me.' 

And Clarke had chosen them.

Clarke always chose them.

If she could go back and do it all again, would she?

Yes. Of course. 

But.

"Would I still know—"

"No questions," they said – whoever they were, and were they even real? Was Clarke drunker than she thought? Was she hallucinating? Or was this a dream? 

She latched on to the idea that this was all just a nightmare, that none of it had happened, that—

"Choose," they said. 

If she could go back and it all over again...

* * *

The click of the door closing behind Lexa for the last time echoed in her ears, and Clarke shattered. 

And there was no one to help her pick up the pieces. There was no one to fill the cracks with gold.

There was no one...

Clarke raced to the door and yanked it open. "Lexa, wait!"

* * *

Clarke leaned against the door frame, suddenly dizzy, her heart pounding in her chest, and the figure that had been retreating down the hall, tall (or at least taller than Clarke) and lithe, glossy dark hair cascading down her back, turned and looked at her, head tipped curiously. 

"I'm sorry," she said. "Have we met?"

Clarke looked around, realizing with a sickening lurch that she didn't know why she was standing in her dorm room door, didn't know why she'd called out to a girl she'd only half-met at an event during orientation, why she'd wanted – _needed_ \- her to wait. There was something, some scrap of a memory... but it was gone before she could grab hold of it. 

"Floor meeting," Clarke managed. "Last week?"

"Oh, right," Lexa said. "Clarke, isn't it?" Clarke nodded, and Lexa smiled. "Was there something you needed, Clarke?" 

_Was there...?_

An excuse. She needed an excuse, a reason to have stopped her, a reason to have interjected herself into Lexa's life, but the truth was she didn't know. 

_Think fast, Griffin. She doesn't have a backpack, so she's probably not headed to class. Where else might she..._

"Dining hall," she blurted, and felt her face flush. "I mean, are you headed to the dining hall? Because I was about to go get some dinner, and—" she forced a laugh, "I guess I still have that high school cafeteria mentality where you're a loser if you eat alone, but—"

"I was," Lexa said, the curiosity and confusion in her eyes tempering to something softer. "Alone. Would you like to join me?"

* * *

Clarke had known – or suspected – she was bisexual for a while now. She found her eyes drawn to the female form as often (or maybe more often) than the male, but she tried to tell herself it was purely aesthetic. After all, no girl had ever made her heart trip over itself every time she looked at her... 

Until now. 

At first she tried to convince herself that what she was feeling was just excitement over making her first real friend at college... or maybe her first real friend _ever_ , because the way Lexa made her feel – seen, and understood, and valued, like what she said and thought and felt really mattered – was so different from what she'd felt with her friends back in high school. But as she started sketching one night, trying to relax enough to sleep after spending the day in Lexa's company, and found herself lingering over the angle of her new friend's jaw and the curve of her lips, she had to admit it was more than that.

_Much_ more than that. 

Because when Lexa had touched her, just a brush of her hand against Clarke's that could have been accidental but somehow felt like it might not be, Clarke had felt like a bottle of soda that had been shaken and was ready to burst, and the feeling had only intensified as the day went on. She found herself looking at Lexa out of the corner of her eye more than she was at the art, even though the trip to the museum had been her idea, as if by looking hard enough she could get inside Lexa's skull and figure out what she was thinking, what she was feeling, if she was feeling something – anything – like what Clarke was. 

Lexa caught her a few times – more than a few – and at first she just smiled, but after a while she would quickly look away, and Clarke would have taken it as a bad sign except for the faint flush of her cheeks and the way her teeth caught her lower lip. When they'd parted ways for the night, there had even been a moment when Clarke thought she might...

_No,_ she told herself. _Do **not** let yourself even **think** about kissing Lexa._

Because even if she wanted it – even if they _both_ wanted it – it was impossible. 

Or... not impossible, but inadvisable. 

_You're not here for romance,_ Clarke reminded herself, over and over again. _You need to focus on your classes. Anything else is a distraction._

But she couldn't study _all_ the time. There was only so much a brain could absorb in one sitting, and she had to eat, and Lexa wasn't the kind of person who liked to take no for an answer.

* * *

"Come on," Lexa said. "We need to celebrate!"

"It's just a test," Clarke said, wanting to crawl out of her skin because Lexa had grabbed her hand and set her nerves on fire. Goosebumps prickled her flesh and she was pins and needles all over. But she couldn't pull her hand away, because she didn't want Lexa to think she'd done something wrong. 

"It's not just a test," Lexa protested. "It was your midterm, which counts for almost half of your grade, which you aced. Highest grade in your class, you said."

"101%," Clarke admitted. She'd gotten one question wrong – a silly mistake that came from not reading as thoroughly as she should have and falling for the trick answer – but made up for it on the extra credit. 

"That's worth celebrating," Lexa insisted. And then she used the one trick that Clarke _always_ fell for: "Please?"

Clarke sighed. " _Fine_ ," she said. "But only for a little while."

"Mmhmm," Lexa said. She waited for Clarke to grab a jacket, because the autumn air had started to turn chilly, and took her hand again as they left the building.

At first Clarke was sure everyone was staring, and she almost pulled away, almost shoved her hands in her pockets where Lexa couldn't reach them... because it was safer, because you never knew what the people around you were thinking, what they might have been raised to believe and how far they might go to impose those beliefs on others... but when they'd walked several blocks without anyone saying anything, with hardly anyone bothering to spare them a glance, she settled into it. 

"Ice cream?" Lexa suggested. 

Clarke shivered. "It's a little cold for that, don't you think?"

Lexa's lips quirked into a crooked smile. "If I thought that, would I have suggested it?"

Clarke wrinkled her nose at her. "Fine," she said. Maybe ice cream wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe it would help subdue the sparks kindling in her belly, tiny flames licking at places she didn't dare let herself think about.

Lexa stopped. She looked at Clarke, all traces of a smile gone. "If you don't want ice cream, we can go somewhere else," she said. "This is for you. I want what you want."

And just like that, Clarke caught fire. "Do you?" she asked. 

Lexa bit her lip, her chin dipping down in a not-quite nod. "I think so," she whispered... and then her lips were on Clarke's, one hand still gripping Clarke's, the other landing on her hip, fingers clenching to draw her closer, and at first Clarke was too surprised – even though she wasn't surprised at all – to do anything. It was as if everything - _everything_ \- had stopped, just for a second... and then her heart remembered how to beat, started racing as if it had to catch up and maybe it did, maybe...

She remembered how to kiss... only this wasn't like any other kiss she'd ever had. This was... more. This was everything. Everything a kiss should be. Everything she'd always wanted and never felt. 

And then it was over, and they stood blinking, dazed, in the middle of the sidewalk. Someone bumped Clarke's shoulder as they brushed by, forcing her to remember where they were, and that anyone – everyone – could have seen them. 

She took a step back. 

"Was that okay?" Lexa asked, uncharacteristic uncertainty creeping into her voice. 

_Okay?_ , Clarke thought. _Okay?! That was better than okay. That was—_ But then she realized Lexa wasn't asking about her technique. She was asking if it was okay for her to have done it at all. And that was a much more complicated question. Clarke _wanted_ to say yes. But if she did, what did that mean? If she said it was okay, Lexa might try to do it again... and Clarke might let her. And then what? Being bisexual was fine in theory, but in reality?

In reality it was still okay. For other people. But Clarke wasn't other people and—

But if she said no... she would be a liar, for one. And for another, it might cost her Lexa's friendship. Not that Lexa would dump her because she didn't feel the same way Lexa did – that was something boys did, not girls, not _Lexa_ \- but it would always be there, the elephant in the room.

And she _did_ feel the same way, damn it! She felt it in every fiber of her being. She just...

"I just need time," Clarke said. "I'm sor—"

Lexa shook her head. "Don't apologize," she said. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Clarke nodded, unable to meet Lexa's eyes. Instead she looked at the ice cream shop Lexa had been leading her toward. "Is this the place that does the brownie sundae with the brownie as big as your head?

"It is," Lexa confirmed, a flicker of her smile returning.

"Sold," Clarke said. 

As they turned to go in, she let her hand brush Lexa's, hooking their pinkies and squeezing. It might have been cruel, like she was leading Lexa on, but that wasn't Clarke's intention. She just needed Lexa to know there was hope. Lexa deserved to know at least that much.

Maybe they both did.

Lexa squeezed back, then let go to let Clarke pass through the door before her.

* * *

Weeks flew by, and nothing changed... but everything had changed. They didn't kiss again, but Clarke couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop wanting it... just not quite enough to make it happen on her own. She'd told Lexa she needed time, and Lexa seemed content – or at least prepared – to give her all the time in the world. 

Or maybe she was just waiting for someone better to come along.

"Are you going home for Thanksgiving?" Clarke asked, the weekend before their first real break of the semester. Which was, consequently, the first time Clarke would be going home since she'd made her escape back at the end of August. To say she wasn't looking forward to it was an understatement. 

Lexa shook her head. "My father's traveling," she said. "Anya invited me to go home with her."

Lexa didn't talk much about home, or family. Clarke knew her mother had passed away when she was young, and her father was both overbearing and emotionally unavailable. His idea of parenting, from what Clarke had gathered, was to tell Lexa what to think and do and feel and withholding any kind of affection or approval until she fell in line. 

A situation Clarke wasn't altogether unfamiliar with, if she was being honest. Her mother might not be as controlling, but she certainly made her displeasure known when Clarke strayed too far from the path that had been laid out for her since she was too young to realize she was allowed to have dreams that weren't the same as her mother's. Her father had tried to encourage her to explore other forks in the road sometimes, but then he'd died, and it was Clarke's fault, and—

"Sorry?" she said, the response automatic when she realized Lexa had asked her something and was waiting for an answer, but she hadn't even heard the question.

"What about you?" Lexa asked. "Are you going home?"

_No,_ Clarke thought. _I **am** home. Where I'm going... that's just the place I used to live._ "Yeah," she sighed. "It'll be great."

"I sense sarcasm," Lexa said, looking at her with a mix of concern and amusement. 

"You think?" Clarke countered, exaggerating her tone.

"Just a little." Now Lexa was smiling – really smiling – and it would have been a perfect moment to kiss her...

... but the door crashed open and Octavia dropped her bag on the floor with a thump and a dramatic groan. "I cannot _wait_ to get out of this place," she said. "It's like the Wizard of Oz. There's no place like—" She cut off when she realized Clarke wasn't alone. "Oh," she said. "Hello."

"Hi," Lexa said, and even though Clarke was looking at Octavia, she could hear the shift in Lexa's voice and knew all trace of a smile was gone. 

The silence stretched, and Clarke knew she should fill it, should smooth things over somehow because that's what she _did_ , but her mouth was dry, her tongue tied, caught between Octavia's glaring disapproval and Lexa's frustrated discomfort.

"I was just leaving," Lexa finally said. "I'll see you later." Her hand brushed Clarke's back as she slid off the bed they'd been sitting on together, and it might have been an accident but Clarke was pretty sure Lexa didn't have those. Everything she did had a purpose and a meaning, and—

"Bye," Clarke said, but Lexa had already closed the door behind her so maybe she didn't hear.

"You should be careful around her," Octavia said. "You know what people say."

_No,_ Clarke thought. _I don't. What do people say?_

But it didn't take a genius to figure it out. With her flannel shirts and beanies and the rainbow pin on her backpack, she was hiding in plain sight... except she wasn't even really hiding. They'd kissed, for god's sake! Girls didn't just kiss other girls for fun. 

Clarke told herself it wasn't a big deal. Octavia didn't mean anything by it. She wasn't...

But she was. Probably. Most of the people in the small town they came from were. It was all white picket fences and two-point-five kids and one man and one woman and probably a golden retriever. 

Except when it wasn't. Octavia had never met her father, and neither had her brother. The ladies at church whispered that they probably didn't even have the same father, and looking at them... 

It wasn't Clarke's place to judge. Just like it wasn't Octavia's place to judge Lexa. 

Clarke opened her mouth to tell her so and was hit by a wave of déjà vu so strong it made her dizzy, and she found herself clutching her sheets, waiting for the world to settle again. But even when the feeling of the world spinning on its axis like a globe in the hands of an overzealous child subsided, she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd had this conversation before. 

Like all of this had happened before. 

But that was impossible. There was no way she could have talked to Octavia about Lexa, about any of this, before and _forgotten_. It wasn't the kind of conversation they had. They weren't even really friends, just two people from the same place who decided it might make the transition from the Middle of Nowhere to the Center of Everything a little easier if they faced it together. But Octavia had met Lincoln the first week of classes and had barely had a minute to spare for Clarke since. Until now, apparently.

"We're just friends," Clarke blurted, because Octavia was still looking at her, watching her as if her thoughts were scrolling across her forehead like subtitles on a TV screen. Her insides began to twist and knot as soon as she said it, because Lexa wasn't – could never be – _just_ anything. Even if they never kissed again...

"Does _she_ know that?" Octavia asked, perfectly sculpted eyebrows arching. 

"Of course," Clarke said. "She's not—" But she didn't know – or didn't want to – finish the sentence, didn't want to speak Octavia's worst thoughts into being. _She's not doing anything I don't want her to._

"Just be careful," Octavia said. "You don't want people thinking you're like her." 

"Smart?" Clarke asked. "Kind? Funny? Loyal?"

Octavia scowled. "You know what I mean," she hissed, like she was afraid someone might overhear even though they were the only two people in the room. Her voice dropped even lower. "They might think you're _gay_."

Clarke swallowed. "What if I was?" she asked, hating that her voice came out thin and reedy when she wanted it to be strong, authoritative, demanding. 

"You're not," Octavia said, rolling her eyes. "You've had boyfriends, remember? And we all heard what happened after Homecoming..." She smirked, but then it slid away. "Seriously, Clarke. If she's trying to convince you that maybe you play for her team, you need to get out now. What would your dad say?"

* * *

"He would be happy for me," Clarke said. "I think he would. As long as I was happy, he would be happy for me."

Lexa kept one hand on Clarke's back as she leaned over to grab a tissue from the box on her desk, which doubled as a nightstand. She handed it to her, and Clarke blotted her eyes. "Of course he'd be happy for you," she said. "Why wouldn't he be?"

Clarke sighed. "Because he wouldn't want me to suffer." 

Lexa's eyes narrowed, her eyebrows almost meeting in the middle of her forehead as she frowned. "Suffer? Because you like girls?"

"I don't!" Clarke said, too quickly and too loud, and then sank her teeth into her lower lip so hard she tasted blood. "I like _you_ , but—"

Lexa pulled away, winding her arms around herself so Clarke couldn't grab hold of her hand. "Okay," she said, looking past Clarke now rather than at her, her chin dipping in a quick, decisive nod like she'd just slipped the last puzzle piece into place and was finally able to see the full picture. 

And Clarke could too, as clearly as one of the sketches she did to clear her head when her thoughts started racing or chasing themselves in circles, except this picture was in vivid technicolor, splashed with rainbows, and Lexa stood tall and proud in the center of it, and Clarke was...

... Clarke wasn't. Not standing next to Lexa, not even on the fringes or tucked into a corner. 

"Wait," she said, clutching the worn sleeve of Lexa's sweater so tight it warped the weave. "Lexa..."

Lexa looked at her, and there were so many emotions swirling in the blue-green of her irises, sucking Clarke down into the black hole of her pupils, and Clarke wanted to let herself be consumed because it would be so much easier. If she was part of Lexa, she wouldn't have to try to find words she didn't have to explain feelings she didn't understand. 

But she wasn't part of Lexa, and if she didn't figure out how to say what she needed to say, she might not even be in her life much longer. Because what use did Lexa have for a friend too cowardly to admit who she was, even to herself?

"Where I'm from," Clarke said, "this," she gestured between the two of them, "isn't okay. Two girls..." She frowned. "Half of them wouldn't even think it was a real relationship. Like how could it be, if no one is sticking anything into anywhere?" 

Lexa snorted. "I feel sorry for the women, if that's all anyone thinks sex is." Her cheeks flushed slightly. "But relationships are more than sex." 

"I know," Clarke said. "Some people would think if they saw two girls together, even if they were holding hands or whatever, that they were just friends." 

"Gal pals," Lexa said. 

"Exactly." Clarke tried to smile, but her face barely twitched. "The level of denial is... pretty epic. Two men." She shook her head. "That's a lot harder. For them to ignore or pretend away. And it's not okay. They're 'good, god-fearing folk' and the Bible says—"

"You don't have to tell me what the Bible says," Lexa said, cutting her off. 

"Sorry," Clarke mumbled. 

Lexa rested her hand over Clarke's where it still gripped her sleeve. "You don't have to be sorry," she said, much more gently. "You're always apologizing, but you have nothing to apologize for."

"I do," Clarke said. "I feel like I do."

"Those are two different things," Lexa pointed out. 

They were. Clarke had been conditioned from the time she was young to apologize for everything, whether it was her fault or not. Not at home, where her parents encouraged her to be strong and independent, to have her own opinions and to articulate them even when others might not want to hear it. But the older she got, the less people wanted to hear it, and she got tired of having to constantly duke it out with people over every little thing... and then her dad died and her mother fell apart and fell in love (or some facsimile thereof) and got married again but the woman she was now was a pale shadow of the woman Clarke had grown up with, and sometimes it was just easier to say you were sorry. Even if you weren't. Even if you didn't know why you were saying it. 

"I like you, Clarke," Lexa said. "And I'm attracted to you. Which are also two different things, but closely intertwined. I can put the latter aside if all you want is the former... but I can't – won't let myself – be an experiment. I get that you're still figuring things out, and that's fine if that's where you are. But I don't want to invest myself in this relationship only to have you look at me one day a few weeks or months from now and say, 'Actually, it was just a phase.'" She looked away, and Clarke sucked in a quick breath before Lexa's gaze pinned her again. "Which isn't to say that if we do... do this, that it's going to be forever. That's something we'll have to figure out together. But first you need to figure yourself out. I need to know you're okay with who you are, that you accept this part of yourself, before I let myself fall any farther or harder than I already have."

"Okay," Clarke said, because what else could she say? She'd asked for time, and Lexa was giving it to her... just when Clarke had started to hope she would get impatient and make the decision for her. But that wasn't Lexa. She was patient. She would wait for Clarke to be ready. 

But patience – even Lexa's – wasn't infinite. Eventually she would move on, with or without Clarke.

The choice was hers.


End file.
